


loose screws

by Origamidragons



Category: Paranatural (Webcomic)
Genre: Bonding, Coping Mechanisms, Drabble, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-08 18:07:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15248970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Origamidragons/pseuds/Origamidragons
Summary: Max fiddles, and Isabel notices.





	loose screws

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to Fictiongeek on the Discord, who requested Max talking to someone about his mom! This was nice to write. Max was hard to write in this because he strikes me as somebody who would rather die than be outwardly emotional but I did my best.

When Max was bored, or stressed, or just needed something to do with his hands, he fiddled. He picked up paperclips and loose screws, pipe cleaners and safety pins, and pocketed them until he needed them later. It was less a conscious activity and more a habit that had been worn into him over many years, and that at some point had become a comfort, associated with safety and quiet and love. 

On the car ride to Mayview, hunched miserably in the passenger seat, he’d bent paper clips into dolphins until his fingers hurt. It had made him feel better, a little. 

Now he was sitting on the sofa in the Activity Club’s room with his feet on a table, waiting for Ed to come back from afternoon patrol, idly half-listening to whatever Isaac and Mr. Spender were arguing about as he twisted a rather sorry-looking pink pipe cleaner into careful loops.

“Hey, Max, whatcha making?” 

He startled slightly, just a slight tightening of his shoulders, then glanced up and met Isabel’s dark, curious eyes. 

“Oh.” He blinked, looked at the curled pipe cleaner like he was seeing it for the first time. “...Dunno. Does it have to be anything?”

Isabel dropped onto the couch next to him, balancing her chin in her hands. “I guess not. I’m surprised. I didn’t really take you for- you know...” She trailed off and made a jazz hands gesture. “The artsy type.” 

He shrugged one shoulder, his gaze dropping back to the work in progress in his hands. “‘m not, really. But when I was younger, I used to do this all the time in my mom’s workshop.” 

“Your mom?” Isabel prompted, sounding more gentle than he thought he’d ever heard her.

Max took a long breath before answering, then let it out in a heavy _whoosh_ of air. “Yeah. Uh. She was a sculptor. A welder. Made statues out of scrap metal. They did... pretty well, too. I would always follow her into her workshop, and watch her work, and she’d give me stuff like this to play with. I know it’s kind of weird, but I never really got out of the habit.”

He paused and rubbed the back of his neck, stubbornly avoiding eye contact. He wasn’t sure why he was telling her this, but he couldn’t get himself to stop. 

“And after… after she was, you know, gone… I just sort of kept doing it.” 

He finished twisting the pipe cleaner into loops and curled it into a circle, the loops fanning out as he twisted the two ends together and balanced the finished creation on his fingertips. 

He wasn’t expecting an arm to appear around his shoulders, and he tensed. “What are you doing.” 

“I’m hugging you, dummy,” Isabel muttered, yanking him into a tight embrace. After a moment of shock, he hesitantly relaxed.

“I think,” she said into his ear, “it’s really great you’ve got something like that to remember your mom by. Really great. I bet she’d be proud of you.” 

Max’s eyes were starting to well up, and he raised one arm to frantically scrub at them with a sleeve of his sweatshirt before anyone could see him crying. 

But when Isabel slowly released him and slumped back into the couch cushions, there as a faint smile on his lips all the same. 

“...do you want this?” he asked after a moment of comfortable silence, holding out the small pipe cleaner sculpture, eyes sliding away from hers again. “I mean- you don’t have to take it, I just figured, I have a lot of these at home, and-“

She cut him off by gently lifting it out of his hand. “I love it,” she said with a grin. “Thanks, Max.” 

She swung some of her dark hair of her shoulder and carefully twined the pipe cleaner creation into her hair, the splash of pink standing out in bright contrast. 

“I guess it doesn’t really match you, uh-“ Max made a sweeping gesture with one hand as though to indicate all of her. “-red.”

“It’s perfect,” she said, and meant it, before elbowing him in the side with a smile. 

“So, tell me more about your mom! What was she like?”


End file.
